


I can tell that we are gonna be friends

by suzukiblu



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Making Friends, Not Canon Compliant - The Legend of Korra, Not Compliant with Avatar Comics, Post-Canon, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzukiblu/pseuds/suzukiblu
Summary: Mai is throwing knives at one of the ornamented doors of the palace. The guards seem awkward about it and clearly don’t know how to stop her. People in the palace are still wary about . . . everything, pretty much. Ozai and Azula weren’t exactly merciful when displeased.Suki knows Mai wouldn’t do anything like they would, of course, but the guards probably don’t.And Mai, admittedly, isn’t thenicestperson in the palace.
Relationships: Background Mai/Zuko, Mai & Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 175
Collections: ATLA Winter Solstice 2020





	I can tell that we are gonna be friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avrelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avrelia/gifts).



> Written for avrelia. Not comics-compliant or LOK-compliant, because I know very little about either.

Mai is throwing knives at one of the ornamented doors of the palace. The guards seem awkward about it and clearly don’t know how to stop her. People in the palace are still wary about . . . everything, pretty much. Ozai and Azula weren’t exactly merciful when displeased. 

Suki knows Mai wouldn’t do anything like they would, of course, but the guards probably don’t. 

And Mai, admittedly, isn’t the _nicest_ person in the palace. 

“What are you doing?” Suki asks, walking up beside her. Mai throws another knife. It sticks in the door. 

“Waiting,” Mai says, looking bored. 

“For what?” 

Mai slants her a briefly annoyed look, then seems to decide she’s actually worth talking to. They’ve never really talked one-on-one before; it just hasn’t come up. 

“Zuko’s out,” Mai says. 

“I know,” Suki says. Two of the other Kyoshi Warriors are with him, making sure nobody who prefers Ozai or Azula gets to him. Zuko’s strong, but he’s not perfect. And everybody could use a little backup sometimes. “He’s visiting the capitol school, isn’t he?” 

“Yes,” Mai says, looking _supremely_ bored. She draws another knife. It’s a particularly nasty-looking one. Suki hasn’t seen it before. 

“Is that new?” she asks. 

“No,” Mai says, flipping it across her fingers before whipping it at the door. It sticks. _Deeply_. 

She’s really not giving her much to go off, here. 

“I think you’re scaring the guards,” Suki says, and Mai rolls her eyes in exasperation. 

“They survived Azula,” she says dubiously. “They can handle me.” 

“Maybe, but is it really necessary to make them?” Suki says. Mai slants her another _look_ , but doesn’t draw another knife. 

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” she says. 

“Nothing, really,” Suki says. “It’s my day off.” 

“Hm.” 

“Why didn’t you go with Zuko?” Suki asks, and Mai snorts. 

“The advisors complained after last time,” she says. “We’re _compromising_ with them.” 

“Last time?” Suki tilts her head. She missed last time. 

“That general brought it on himself,” Mai replies cryptically. 

“Which one?” Suki says. 

“The one who’s limping this week,” Mai says. 

“Ah.” 

Mai doesn’t say anything, and they’re both quiet for a moment. Suki searches for something to say herself, but isn’t sure what Mai would actually want to talk about. All she knows about her is how well she fights and the fact that she loves Zuko enough to risk her life for him. Everything else is kind of . . . vague. 

“Do you want to spar?” she asks finally, hooking her hands together behind her back. Mai gives her an assessing look. 

“With what?” she says. 

“With whatever you’ve got,” Suki says. “I’d be using my fans, personally.” 

“Ty Lee likes those,” Mai says neutrally. 

“I know,” Suki says. The last time _they_ sparred, Ty Lee used a folded-up fan to extend her reach and hit a pressure point that made Suki’s whole arm go numb for an hour. She did not win that spar, for obvious reasons. 

“We can do it out back by the turtleduck pond,” Mai says, then walks up to the abused palace doors and pries out her deeply-embedded knives. The doors suffer a bit more damage for it, but she gets them all out in the end. 

“Not the usual training grounds?” Suki asks curiously. 

“They’re boring,” Mai says matter-of-factly as she pulls out the last knife and disappears it somewhere inside her sleeves. Or . . . possibly her belt? 

Mai’s pretty good at hiding her weapons. 

“Alright,” Suki says, and Mai opens the doors and leads the way through the palace halls. Ty Lee tends to avoid going too deep into the palace, and Zuko occasionally gets lost in it or upset by something that he sees. Mai knows the way faultlessly, though, and seems unbothered by any ghosts that might still haunt the place. 

Well, that’s probably better, Suki thinks. 

It probably also explains why she does things like throw knives at the palace doors, though. 

It’s a bit of a distance, but eventually they step out into a walled-off little garden with the aforementioned turtleduck pond. Mai walks out into the middle of the garden without looking back at her. She hasn’t actually looked back once, come to think of it. 

Suki follows her into the grass. She’s not wearing her armor or her war paint, but she has her fans, and that’s all she really needs for a spar. 

Even if Mai’s not exactly the nicest person in the palace. 

Well, if Suki cared about that, she wouldn’t have talked to her to begin with. 

“I don’t think I’ve been back here before,” she says. Mai turns around and looks at her. 

“Zuko’s mother liked it,” she says. “We used to play here with Azula.” 

“Ah,” Suki says. Well, that explains that, then. “How do you want to do this?” 

“I don’t care,” Mai says, shaking out her sleeves. Something clinks audibly inside them, but Suki can’t tell what. 

“First blood?” she suggests. Mai gives her a bored look. 

“That just means I’ll win,” she says, and admittedly, she does have more sharp objects on her than Suki does. 

“Then how about we just go ‘til one of us calls it?” Suki says. 

“Fine,” Mai says. She twists her wrists and her hands are suddenly full of needles. Suki’s seen her do the move before, but it’s still impressive. 

“Alright,” she says, pulling out her fans and stepping into a defensive stance. “On three?” 

“Three,” Mai says, and whips a handful of needles directly at her face. Suki barely gets up a fan in time to block them, and Mai takes advantage of the temporary blind spot to dash to the side and throw the rest of the needles at her. Suki knocks them out of the air with her other fan. 

She probably should’ve expected the “three” thing, really, she thinks wryly. Ty Lee’s not like that, but when they count like that she always tenses like she’s expecting an immediate attack. Suki’d attributed that to Azula, before, but again: Mai is not the nicest person in the palace. 

Technically she never really sided with them or rejected the war. She just protected Zuko. 

Then again, similar things could be said about Ty Lee, so Suki’s not going to worry too much about it. 

“You’re fast,” she observes. Mai doesn’t give the impression that she’d be fast, usually, though obviously Suki already knew she could be. It’s still interesting to see the shift in her, though. 

“Obviously,” Mai says, still looking bored, then darts in close with a knife in each hand. Suki barely keeps from getting her chest slashed open. She wonders if that’s Azula’s influence, or if Mai would always be this brutal in a spar. 

Azula picked her friends for a reason, she’s sure. 

Suki leaps back in time to avoid the follow-up strike, and Mai presses forward. Suki barely manages to bend backwards fast enough to avoid being sliced, the knife passing alarmingly close to her face. Mai has her on the defensive, which is a problem when there isn’t another warrior on hand to step in and distract her. Suki’s still more used to fighting in a group than not, even after her time in the Boiling Rock. It’s just the way she was trained. 

But that doesn’t mean she can’t adapt. 

Suki drops into a crouch and sweeps a leg at Mai’s. Mai jumps over it, but it buys Suki a moment to snap a fan open again. She slashes at Mai’s arm and misses it, but tears her sleeve. 

“Hm,” Mai says, her eyes flashing with interest. 

“It’s been a while since we fought,” Suki says, smiling at her. They’d barely faced off during that altercation between their groups, but they’d very much faced off. “I think we’ve both probably learned a few things, haven’t we?” 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Mai says with a smirk, more knives dropping into her hands. Suki can see a holster through her torn sleeve. 

“Happy to,” she says lightly, and they both throw themselves at each other. 

Suki’s made friends stranger ways, really.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://suzukiblu.tumblr.com/)


End file.
